((I know you all will keep this strictly OOC, so I decided to post it for anyone who is interested in reading it. I can't see Solaje ever detailing these events to people IC, she's not a chatterbox like Hadya. I am having a lot of fun playing her, I haven't played a dark character in years!))

This thin folio is fashioned of flexible grey leather and has been embossed with twining thorny vines. A small cobalt clasp resembling a blue rose holds it shut. Most of the thick vellum pages are blank, but the first four pages are covered in delicate calligraphy. The title page is inscribed with the name, “Solaje Corvi”.

The stag was blind to my presence until the arrow pierced his neck. He bounded a few strides and crashed heavily into the mossy loam. The arrow was badly placed and I plainly read the terror in his wide eyes. I heard your voice as my dagger found his thick jugular. It was your blood I saw as his soaked the leaves, my hands, and the earth. You taught me this. You were so upright, so idealistic. You told me that a good huntress never leaves her quarry to suffer. I think you gave such a warning because you were shocked at the way I exulted over my first kill. I remembered your teaching at your death, and I know you are glad in your freedom.

~~~

This morning possessed a particular freshness, a lovely moist expectancy in the woodland air. I am strongly reminded of springtime in the mountains of Ivial. I can see the new growth softening austere old pine and fir. The billowing, fragile grasses will conceal the cruel blades of unforgiving ravines. This sun bathed transformation will be brief and desperate- ephemeral, yet sovereign. Spring is a fleeting goddess in the high places. Soon the rhododendrons will bloom in a riotous pink rebellion against the endless grip of winter. Does that same bush still bloom? It must have lived many years before we sat underneath it, side by side, that fateful day. Did you know when you leaned in for a forbidden kiss you were signing a death warrant? Would you have done the same if you knew your whole family would lie in the grave? I know you would. I marvel at inexorable fate. The only thing I truly regret is that I loved your brother first.

~~~

I spent some time at the church today. I watched the people bow in innocent supplication. I watched an unblemished Templar stride confidently to and fro, and a guileless monk tend the sick and wounded. How naïve they all are. They do not realize they might fall as far as me in a single heartbeat. I became the shadow of a pillar and none spoke to me. I went there not for Seraphina’s blessing, but for your brother’s. I pray to my dead husband for forgiveness. I never pray for yours, we never needed words between us.

~~~

Spring is a season of pain. At every turn, memories assault me. Every trilling bird in the woods might be you, playing games. How I wish we had been the best of friends, and nothing more. Spring batters me with vivid images of the pool at the foot of the greenly flowing waterfall. How bright it seemed, tumbling down the pale limestone cliffs! It was a dream. I wish that last peaceful day had gone on for eternity. What heaven it would have been for both of us to expire silently in that little rowboat, rocked gently out of the world by soft flower scented breezes. You asked me if I would be yours if I were a widow. I cast my eyes away, out across the turquoise waters, and said nothing. You took my silence for consent and straightened your shoulders. I could see your ego rise. My silence is my guilt. Surely I knew even then what you meant to do.

~~~

I came across two boys caught up in their indecipherable games today. They had wooden swords strapped over simple woolen tunics. They yelled and screamed, slipping and jumping through muddy puddles. I could not help remembering you and him. Countless times, I watched you play at swords, raucously pretending war. I remember when we were children and you had wooden swords, like the boys I saw. I remember when you suggested bare steel. How foolish, and how like you. Yet I had no fear, because you loved each other. Time after time you would spar, but you never hurt each other. As your sword pierced his heart, I saw the death of your honor, and mine.

~~~

I dreamed last night, fearfully and fitfully, and so I am glad I woke. I dream only of your death. I often find myself thinking about those still, breathless weeks after he died. I wonder what you did with yourself. In my imagination you escape to our waterfall and weep endless tears onto the moss shrouded rocks. I never told you how sick I became, and how silent. My grief swallowed the sky. I was never fit to marry someone so good, so beautiful. He was so full of light that he was blind to our darkness, our betrayal. You never knew of your brother’s child growing in my womb. You died four weeks after I became a widow. When I knocked at your door, your mother and sister thought nothing of it. Perhaps they were glad to see me out of my room again. The look in your dark eyes tore my soul as a wolf’s teeth rip a doe. You had fallen, metamorphosed into someone new. It was at that moment true despair held my heart. All without realizing, I had mourned my husband, forgiven you, and hoped for a new life. You knelt at my feet and I saw that I had ensnared you completely. You were a mighty stag caught in a trap, mortally wounded, but clinging to the semblance of majesty. You were waiting for a merciful release. A good huntress never leaves her quarry to suffer. My arms were as heavy as lead and the last of my tears burned down my cheeks, but I managed to draw my dagger. I knelt with you, my forehead touching yours. I breathed your last breath with you, one hand tangled in your black hair. I whispered his name, and yours. Your blood covered us, so bright, tumbling over your white linen shirt and my pale, cold hands. You took such care to make no noise, grasping at chivalry when all hope of honor was gone. Your mother and sister must have heard, or seen, somehow. I don’t remember them. I think I see their faces in my dream, but when I try to recall upon waking, they’re gone. I know that they died that night too. I have an impression of great heat while the house burned. These are my dreams, less horrifying in ink. On the worst nights, you come back to life, a shadowy mockery of yourself, and point one finger at my heart. The fault lies here, you say.

I never dream of my own death. I think only of the child that never was. How cold and clean our pool was at midnight. The full moon hung calmly in a velvety black sky. I remember how it looked from deep under the clear water, where the stones held me until everything was nothing. The crone pulled my body free, and I was denied the possibility of escape. I never knew she lived alone in those woods, until that night. She told me that I rose again because of some sort of black taint of nether. I saw that she knew everything about me, and pretended that I had no voice. She told me my womb would forever remain as barren as my soul. There is nothing left now, but the hunt. These words are vapor. I shall write no more.

((Here are some of the nuts and bolts without the Viali dramatics: When I wrote about the nether taint, I meant the minor taint that all player characters have. Solaje’s husband’s family is from a small hamlet in the mountains bordering Ivial and Tol Rhun. She was from a neighboring village that was higher up in the mountains, closer to Tol Rhun . She hopes that her family thinks she died in the fire. Her husband was a Templar who was often away attending to church business. They were childhood sweethearts and married very young, at about 17. Her husband asked his older brother to watch out for her and keep her occupied while he was gone, which led to the above events. She has been known to use a colloquial expression, “Walk in the light”, which was used upon parting in her hometown. This expression is unique to mountain villages, though no one knows where it first originated. Some speculate it has its roots in the close proximity to Tol Rhun, but others think that it has to do with the scarcity of sunlight in the dense mountain forests.))

Last edited by Hadya on Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.